Following a series of measures taken to foster a green policy for the Laboratory, CERN Management has recently appointed an Energy Issues Coordinator. While it's hard to imagine magic solutions that would substantially decrease the energy consumption of the research accelerators, it is certainly within our reach to re-use thermal “waste” energy and to optimise infrastructure to become more sustainable and eco-friendly. Real eco-projects are in the making.
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CERN has many traditions, but in a week that’s seen the launch of the Medical Service’s ‘Move & eat better’ campaign, it’s refreshing to note that among the oldest is a sporting one. The CERN relay race dates back to 15 October 1971 when 21 pioneering teams set off to pound the pavements of CERN. Back then, the Focus users group came in first with a time of 12 minutes and 42 seconds. Today’s route is slightly different, and the number of teams has risen to over 100, with a new category of Nordic Walking introduced, as part of the campaign, for the first time.
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The technical issues that caused a rocky re-start after the technical stop and a relatively low performance of the machine have been tackled and resolved in the past days. The LHC is back to record collision rates and matching the 2011 data set now seems within reach for the summer conferences.
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While the LHC will play the starring role in the 2013/2014 Long Shutdown (LS1), the break will also be a chance for its experiments to upgrade their detectors. CMS will be expanding its current muon detection systems, fitting 72 new cathode strip chambers (CSC) and 144 new resistive plate chambers (RPC) to the endcaps of the detector. These new chambers are currently under construction in Building 904.
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In a recently published paper, the LHCb collaboration reported on a possible deviation from the Standard Model. Theorists are now working to calculate precisely this effect and to evaluate the implications that such an unexpected result could have on the established theory.
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On Thursday 16 May, ambassadors, official representatives and delegates from countries in the Middle East arrived at CERN to participate in an event supporting SESAME, which included the signing of a new agreement between CERN and SESAME. The agreement adds to growing multi-national support for SESAME – vital ingredients for the completion of the project.
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To mark the release of Invenio 1.0, the first User Group Workshop was held last week, with more than 40 developers, system administrators and librarians from 14 different countries attending. The participants were able to catch up on developments in CERN’s digital library software and get a glimpse of where it's going next.
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Until 20 June, the Pont de la Machine in Geneva will host an exhibition on fibre optics, sponsored by SIG. CERN, a major user of this technology, was invited to take part with a presentation of some of its scintillating fibre detectors.
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During his visit on 24 and 25 May, former CERN Fellow and ESA astronaut Christer Fuglesang gave a soft-toy neutralino back to CERN’s Director for Research Sergio Bertolucci. In 2009, CERN’s Director-General Rolf Heuer had given Christer the neutralino to be part of his official flight kit, just before the astronaut began his second mission on space shuttle flight STS-128.
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On 16 June, CERN’s music season will open with Music on the Lawn. The event is the CERN Music Club’s contribution to the Fete de la Musique and will take place on the terrace of Restaurant 1 from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. The Hardronic Festival, CERN’s long-running rock festival, will be held on the evenings of 20 and 21 July in Prévessin, on the terrace behind Restaurant 3. If you would like to help with the organisation, please contact the Music Club by e-mail: music.club@cern.ch.
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Gilles Jobin, an internationally renowned dancer and choreographer from Geneva, is just starting his three-month residency at CERN. It’s the Organization’s first Collide@CERN dance and performance residency and is funded by the City and Canton of Geneva. Freshly installed in his new office, he’s just starting to get to grips with the combination of dance and high energy physics.
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Do you consider browsing the Internet to be your private business? When visiting random web-sites, how far do you assume you are anonymous? Would it matter to you that Google or Facebook can profile your browsing behaviour in order to better target you with advertisements? Did you notice that you already get targeted ads when you are logged on to Google or Facebook even if you are visiting completely different websites? If matters to you, note that browsing anonymously on the Internet is far from easy.
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In this special video edition of the Ombuds' Corner, Vincent Vuillemin takes a look at a social exclusion at CERN. Please note that the characters and situations appearing in this work are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons or events is purely coincidental.
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Materials properties databases are a crucial source of information when doing research in Materials Science. The creation and regular updating of such databases requires identification and collection of relevant worldwide scientific and technical literature, followed by the compilation, critical evaluation, correlation and synthesis of both existing and new experimental data.
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